The class-war, like wars between nations,
produces two opposing views, each equally true and
equally untrue. The citizen of a nation at war,
when he thinks of his own countrymen, thinks of them
primarily as he has experienced them, in dealings
with their friends, in their family relations, and so
on. They seem to him on the whole kindly, decent
folk. But a nation with which his country is at
war views his compatriots through the medium of a
quite different set of experiences: as they appear
in the ferocity of battle, in the invasion and subjugation
of a hostile territory, or in the chicanery of a
juggling diplomacy. The men of whom these facts
are true are the very same as the men whom their
compatriots know as husbands or fathers or friends,
but they are judged differently because they are
judged on different data. And so it is with those who
view the capitalist from the standpoint of the
revolutionary wage-earner: they appear inconceivably
cynical and misjudging to the capitalist, because the
facts upon which their view is based are facts which
he either does not know or habitually ignores. Yet
the view from the outside is just as true as the view
from the inside. Both are necessary to the complete
truth; and the Socialist, who emphasizes the outside
view, is not a cynic, but merely the friend of the
wage-earners, maddened by the spectacle of the needless
misery which capitalism inflicts upon them.
I have placed these general reflections at the
beginning of our study, in order to make it clear to
the reader that, whatever bitterness and hate may
be found in the movements which we are to examine,
it is not bitterness or hate, but love, that is their
mainspring. It is difficult not to hate those who
torture the objects of our love. Though difficult, it
is not impossible; but it requires a breadth of
outlook and a comprehensiveness of understanding which
are not easy to preserve amid a desperate contest.
If ultimate wisdom has not always been preserved by
Socialists and Anarchists, they have not differed in
this from their opponents; and in the source of their
inspiration they have shown themselves superior to
those who acquiesce ignorantly or supinely in the
injustices and oppressions by which the existing
system is preserved.
PROPOSED ROADS
TO FREEDOM
SOCIALISM, ANARCHISM AND SYNDICALISM
PART I
HISTORICAL
CHAPTER I
MARX AND SOCIALIST DOCTRINE
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